Where Liberalism Is Alive and Well!

My thoughts And Some Links On The Eve Of The Election

I thought I’d put down a few thoughts before tomorrows important election. I’ve been sick for the last week with a terrible cold and it has interfered with my plans to post like hell in the lead up to the election.

This race has been fascinating in so many ways. The Republican party is in shambles, with no adult supervision or guidance. Mitt Romney is a pathological liar with money, a dangerous combination.

Many books will be written about this election and I’ve been thinking hard of writing one myself. I’ve also thought about a documentary or two surrounding what happened in 2012. So many ideas, so little time.

I’m particularly fascinated by the collective failure of the media to do their jobs. In my 50 years on this planet, I’ve never seen anything like it. Sure, there are examples of some great journalists who have done awesome work over the last year, but as a group, the media has failed miserably by all standards.

I thought I’d direct you to some great reads that I’ve come across over the last few days of blowing my nose, coughing and sneezing.

If you haven’t heard about or read the piece by Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei in Political titled “Lessons Learned from 2012”, you should go take a look at it. In my opinion, they are basically outing themselves as racists…but they probably don’t even realize it. In many ways, they are revealing what many other journalists have been more subtle about when they talk “demographics” in polls and particularly that all important “white vote”. Several people have written responses to it, including Steve Benen at the Maddow Blog and Joy-Ann Reid from The Grio.

The idea that Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy was the reason for Romney’s momentum coming to and end is a bunch of crap, if you ask me. I never saw his “momentum” after the first debate as anything more than what it was, a media hyped bounce – one kept afloat by the hot air coming out of most of the media, left and right, and of course the Romney campaign as well. The great Nate Silver had a go at that idea at his NYT’s Fivethirtyeight blog. Go give it a read.

The entire line of attack seems rather sad — it’s more forced than sincere — but the larger takeaway is that the Romney campaign has spent months chasing after every shiny object that catches their eye.

This campaign is going to be about “the private sector is doing fine”! Wait, scratch that, it’s going to be about “you didn’t build that”! Oh, actually, on second thought, it’s going to be about the “redistribution” quote from 1998! Hold on, now it’s going to be about “you can’t change Washington from the inside”! On second thought, it’s going to be about “not optimal”! No, wait, it’s going to be about characterizing developments in the Middle East as “bumps in the road”!

This is precisely why I’ve compared Team Romney to small children playing soccer, running wildly to wherever they see a bouncing ball, whether it’s strategically wise or not. There’s certainly nothing wrong with a campaign taking advantage of new opportunities, but haphazardly shifting from one out-of-context sound bite to another is evidence of an unfocused candidate in search of an effective message.

I’ve been camped out at Nate Silver’s Fivethirtyeight blog for the last couple of weeks. As I’m sure most of you know, he looks at all the polls and sorts through them to come up with damn accurate predictions. As of this moment, 6:29 pm, he has President Obama’s chances of winning at 86.3% and his projected electoral tally at 307.2. Because he doesn’t play the game of bouncing from one poll to the next but rather combines them, weights them and comes up with more accurate estimates, many in the media aren’t big fans. They of course rely on the latest poll to write their stories for them and Nate just takes all the air out of their balloons. Pundits have taken some shots at him recently. He took one back at them as quoted in this piece.